Sins of the Father
by blue weekends
Summary: A convict comes out of jail a new man and finds that the love of his life has moved on without him. Worse, she's got a kid, and it just might be his.
1. can I have my time back?

I hope no-one reading this will ever know the feeling of being in prison, because when I came out today, it dawned me what I have lost. When I went in the slammer as a felon, taking the years for a drug charge – a tender mercy compared to the other charges that got dropped in the court on account of a shrewd weasel of a lawyer who was just as rotten as the clients he represented – people were still using flip phones rather than smartphones. Obama had won a second term in office. Windows 8 just came out. Whitney Houston was found in her hotel bathtub after she took the easy way out with the coke.

Now I'm in the car with my homeboy Wallace. He had picked me up outside the gates, shook my hand and welcomed me back, as if I came back from war. The radio's on now, and I'm hearing a white man is in the White House once more. I hear of new genders, weed being legalized, North Korea stirring the shit as they test their rockets, K-pop being a thing. Names, places, stuff that don't matter that much to me, but they remind me that the world has moved on without me, left me behind as I did my time in my eight-by-eight cell in the penitentiary, occasionally spending nights in solitary after people came to me looking for prey and getting a fight. Guards don't like fights.

It's sobering to realize that the world don't give a shit about you. I've known it long ago from my time in the projects as I watch boys trying to be soldiers as they gun each other down on the streets over corners one crew want to own instead of another, but goddamn if I don't forget that fact every once in a while, only for the knowledge to smack me again in the face.

I don't ask Wallace about our crew. I ask him about Kyanna. I hear from him that she's dropped out of school and works at a salon trying to make ends meet as a hairdresser. I hear she's dating, meeting new people but not sticking with anyone in particular.

I hear she's got a kid. I don't ask how old the kid is.

I don't ask if it's mine.

I tell Wallace that I'm going to drop by on her. He tells me she's moved on. Just like the world. I don't give a shit that he believed that, that it might be true. I needed to see the burned bridge for myself.

And I needed to see the kid too. See if it's a boy.

See if it looks like me.

I think about nothing but that as Wallace drives me home. Not the people I had scores to settle with. Not my crew who helped get me the lawyer that made sure I did five instead of twenty to life, who I should go back and thank and catch up with. Not the fact that I'm finally free of the slow hell that was what the government like to call rehabilitation.

Only the thought that I might be a dad.


	2. have you met someone?

Hours later, I'm in a living room, doing my best not to look at all the toys scattered all over the floor as Kyanna comes out of the kitchen with the coffee. The jigsaw puzzles, the Lion King picture book, the Goku figurine and the Lego pieces. Shit, it hurts to look. "Didn't know DBZ's still a thing," I murmur as I take my coffee from her, noticing how she's even gone through the trouble of making the froth look like a tulip, like they do in the more hip cafes.

"Ethan says they're rebooting it. New season and everything." Kyanna sits opposite me. She looks good. She's always looked good, but now, it's a different kind of good from the one I'm used to seeing. The cocktail dress is gone and she's now wearing a business blouse and skirt, the kind a girl would wear when she's going to a job interview.

Guess Kyanna's on her way up in the world. "No kidding," I say.

"Yes, he's crazy about it. Always asks me if he can visit his friend next door when the new episode comes out. They have internet so they can stream it." Kyanna shakes her head and looks at all the toys Ethan has left strewn about us, daring us to broach the subject. "I can't afford a phone for him. I'm still using a brick phone right now, of all things."

I have seen it. It's one of those models you can hurl at a wall and it'd put a dent in the plaster and _still_ make a call. Tough, durable, and reliable. "You're actually doing him a favor," I say. "This new generation, they're too young to play with the technology early." When she doesn't reply I throw caution to the wind. "He's in school right now?"

"Kindergarten." A glance at the clock. It's just past noon now. A few more hours till Ethan gest out. Kyanna hesitates. "I started him early. He's turning five in a few months."

And the judge gave me a five-year sentence.

I drink deeply from my mug to have an excuse not to speak. She doesn't do the same. She just looks at the toys. Like me, she has done the math. She has probably done the math many times since Ethan came into the world. The quiet hangs heavy in the room.

"Is there anyone?" I ask, when I can't take it anymore. "Anyone I should know about?"

She looks at me carefully for a long moment, before studying the froth of her coffee, which looks like a heart from this angle. "Yes," she says finally. "We have been seeing each other for a while." She shrugs to herself, a smile being toyed on her lips as she rubs a thumb against the porcelain of her mug. "He's seen Ethan. They get along quite well. He sometimes visits on the weekends, and we talk."

I nod as she sips, the froth on the surface of her coffee fading into indistinctness. It's all I can do.


End file.
